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What if you go to use your debit card but find you have a $100 spending limit — even if you have more money in your account? Right now, the idea is a bargaining chip being used by some of the nation's biggest banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. The change would have a big impact on shoppers. The average family spends $122 on groceries every week, so a simple trip to the supermarket might in the future require a stop at the ATM. It all goes back to new rules that Congress is considering aimed...

The Treasury may have made some silly paper "profit" on its bailout of Citigroup (C) but the taxpayer may not get much of anything. The Washington Post reports that as part of the bank's TARP payback agreement, it's quietly been given a $38 billion tax break by the IRS. Seriously. The Internal Revenue Service on Friday issued an exception to long-standing tax rules for the benefit of Citigroup and a few other companies partially owned by the government. As a result, Citigroup will be allowed to retain billions of dollars worth of tax breaks that otherwise would decline in value...

Citigroup fears fresh wave of sovereign defaults and bank failures in eurozone Citigroup has warned of a fresh wave of bank failures and a string of sovereign defaults in Europe unless EU leaders come up with a credible response to the crisis. By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor 6:18AM GMT 22 Dec 2010 Professor Willem Buiter, the bank’s chief economist and a former UK rate-setter, said the eurozone is paralysed by a "game of chicken" between the European Central Bank and EMU governments in charge of fiscal policy. Both sides are trying to shift responsibility onto the other for shoring...

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Former Credit Suisse First Boston star banker Frank Quattrone surrendered to federal authorities Wednesday morning and will face criminal charges, prosecutors said. James Comey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, will unveil the charges at a 1 p.m. ET press conference. Quattrone, a former star banker for CSFB, allegedly advised his colleagues in late 2000 to destroy documents while regulators were investigating the ways Wall Street investment banks were doling out shares of lucrative initial public offerings. The former banker is charged in a three-count criminal complaint with obstruction of justice, document destruction...

NEW YORK -- The Federal Reserve on Wednesday reluctantly opened the books on its monumental campaign to save the financial system in the midst of the recent crisis, revealing how it distributed some $3.3 trillion in relief. The data revealed that the Fed's aid was scattered much more widely than previously understood. Two European megabanks -- Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse -- were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities. The Fed's dollars also flowed to major American companies that are not financial players, including McDonald's and Harley-Davidson, through unsecured short-term loans. The measure, initiated in Jan....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go back, audio sound bite-wise, to me on my program, this program. This is March 12th of this year... RUSH ARCHIVE: The TARP money was not used for its original purpose. There's something else out there, Jordan, you need to know. The Federal Reserve, before the TARP bailout, made loans totaling $2 trillion and they will not tell us to whom. We don't know who got the money. Whether the Fed loans it or the government prints it, it's our money. So you can talk about the $700 billion TARP. You can talk about the $787...

The Washington to Wall Street revolving door spins on, Bloomie reports: Citigroup Inc., recovering from its $45 billion bailout in 2008, is in advanced talks to hire former White House Budget Director Peter Orszag, people with knowledge of the matter said. Orszag, 41, may take a job in the New York-based firm’s investment-banking division, the people said, declining to be identified because the discussions are private. An announcement may come as early as today, one of the people said. Of course, there is a well-trampled trail between the White House and Citigroup, most prominently traveled by Clinton administration Treasury Secretary...

Frightening FalloutIn order to easily buy and sell mortgages between themselves so that these loans might be repackaged, securitized and then sold to investors as mortgage-backed securities, banks and other lenders needed a quick way to "trade" individual mortgages. They created a company called Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS). This group includes Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), GMAC LLC (NYSE: GMA), Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC), Washington Mutual (now owned by JPMorgan Chase), the United Guaranty Corp. unit of American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG), Fannie Mae (OTC: FNMA), Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC), mortgage-servicing companies and other similarly...

"The latest ugly news for Bank of America is actually coming from Europe, where big institutional money managers and other mortgage securities buyers are now beginning to organize for an assault."

At the end of last week's letter on the whole mortgage foreclosure mess, I wrote: "All those subprime and Alt-A mortgages written in the middle of the last decade? They were packaged and sold in securities. They have had huge losses. But those securities had representations and warranties about what was in them. And guess what, the investment banks may have stretched credibility about those warranties. There is the real probability that the investment banks that sold them are going to have to buy them back. We are talking the potential for multiple hundreds of billions of dollars in losses...

Florida foreclosure law firms were using the same "robo-signer"-type practices to repossess homes that tripped up the nation's major lenders, a signal, defense attorneys argue, that should lead to a larger foreclosure moratorium. Banks that have not pulled back on foreclosure sales and evictions, such as lender CitiMortgage, gave firms power of attorney to sign documents on their behalf. In turn, some firms created assembly-line signing systems to keep up with bank deadlines on foreclosure cases.

Mr Lenihan had been speaking for less than two minutes on Friday before a mistake by Citigroup meant that the bank's clients were all able to be heard on the line. Between 200 and 500 investors are understood to have been on the call, and as they realised their lines were not muted many began to heckle Mr Lenihan. Some traders began making what one banker on the call described as "chimp sounds", while another cried out "dive, dive". A third man said "short Ireland" before adding "why not short Citi too?" As the call descended into chaos, with one...

Regulators on Friday shut down a big community bank based in Chicago that has been known for its social activism but racked by financial troubles in recent months. It was the 114th U.S. bank to fail this year. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over ShoreBank, with $2.16 billion in assets and $1.54 billion in deposits. Urban Partnership Bank, a new institution comprised of several big Wall Street banks and a private foundation, agreed to assume ShoreBank's deposits and nearly all its assets... In an unusual move, the FDIC allowed some of ShoreBank's executives to continue running the restructured bank......

Obama's choice to be the government's chief budget officer received a bonus of more than $900,000 from Citigroup Inc. last year -- after the Wall Street firm for which he worked received a massive taxpayer bailout. The money was paid to Jacob Lew in January 2009, about two weeks before he joined the State Department as deputy secretary of state, according to a newly filed ethics form. The payout came on top of the already hefty $1.1 million Citigroup compensation package for 2008 that he reported last year. Administration officials and members of Congress last year expressed outrage that executives...

Wall Street's most vocal critics of the new financial regulations aren't invited to the party. Neither Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein nor JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon were asked to attend President Obama's signing ceremony set for today in Washington. FinReg, as the financial sector overhaul is known, is likely to alter the state and style of business of Wall Street and, potentially, sap billions of dollars of revenues from some of the most powerful financial institutions in the country. The high-profile ceremony is expected to be attended by a few hundred guests including Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, viewed by...

As the deepening crisis of the catastrophic Gulf oil disaster continues to unfold, several oil spill stories of major importance have been virtually ignored. Even the conservative media have refused by and large to cover these stories. Conservative Examiner was among the first to break these stories, yet to this day not a single major media outlet has been willing to report them, not even Fox News or conservative talk radio. These stories are explosive, conclusive, factually verified, and of utmost importance to understanding what is truly happening in the Gulf and the scenario that led to it. First, on...

NEW YORK,- A New York woman's lawsuit against Citigroup says she was fired because bosses deemed her feminine beauty to be a distraction for male colleagues. Debrahlee Lorenzana, 33, said in her city Supreme Court lawsuit that she was ordered not to wear turtlenecks, pencil skirts, fitted suits or heels in the workplace because the tight clothing made her body "too distracting" for male coworkers, the New York Daily News reported Thursday. "Never did I ever show cleavage," Lorenzana said. "I like fashion, but I always dressed professionally." "I can't help it that I have curves," she said. "And I'm...

CitiFinancial said Tuesday it will close 330 branches in the U.S., including three in Missouri and eight in Illinois. Baltimore-based CitiFinancial, the consumer finance arm of Citigroup (NYSE: C), was not immediately disclosing which branches it will shutter, spokeswoman Shannon Bell said. As part of a reorganization plan, CitiFinancial is separating its U.S. business full-service branch and servicing segments, and will convert 182 of its full-service U.S. branches into servicing centers. CitiFinancial also said it would rename its business after the reorganization and by the end of the year. Full-service branches will continue to focus on loan originations and servicing...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Robert Rubin, the former financial superstar once lionized for his global crisis-fighting prowess, was scolded Thursday over the mortgage-securities disaster at Citigroup Inc. when he was a top executive there. His claim he didn't know of the risks piling up drew a sharp retort. "You can't have it both ways: You either were pulling the levers or asleep at the switch," the head of the panel investigating the roots of the financial crisis told Rubin at a hearing. Rubin expressed regret. Yet he insisted he didn't know until late in the game, when the subprime mortgage crisis...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Robert Rubin, a senior adviser to Citigroup Inc. at the time of its deep losses from subprime mortgages, said Wednesday that he learned belatedly that Citi had $43 billion in high-risk securities on its books. "I do not recall knowing before September 2007" that the bank had held onto the investments composed of repackaged mortgage bonds, Rubin said. In November 2007, Citigroup publicly estimated it would lose $8 billion to $11 billion in the fourth quarter that year from those securities.